Where Was The `Change' During The Clintons' First Two Terms?--Part 8

In their current campaign to secure a third term in the White House, in violation of the spirit of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which limits U.S. Establishment politicians who become the U.S. president to two terms in office), the Clintons are claiming that a third Clinton Administration in Washington, D.C. will bring democratic political “change” to U.S. society. Yet as the following historical column items from Downtown indicate, when Bill Clinton was the U.S. President during the 1990s the Clintons failed to bring democratic political change to U.S. society:

378 Days After The Clintons’ Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

Bill “Whitewater” Clinton has been spending a lot of U.S. tax money flying around Europe and even making a 1996 re-election campaign appearance on Russian television. Yet such foreign travel activity hasn’t produced much “change” within the United States. Federal Medicaid cards have still not been issued to U.S. citizens who still lack health insurance. Apartments have still not been provided for people in the U.S. who are presently forced to live on the freezing Winter streets. The official African-American unemployment rate in the U.S. still exceeds 11.5 percent. And despite all the handshaking in Russia and the Ukraine, the Clintons’ Administration has still not told people in the U.S. when it intends to declare the United States a nuclear weapons-free zone of the Earth.

As you probably realize by now, 378 days after the Clintons’ inauguration, the U.S. Establishment is still unwilling to let people in the United States genuinely participate in the federal government and the Big Media’s day-to-day decision-making process, on the issues which affect their lives. Hence, U.S. society continues to drift into a deeper and deeper political, economic, environmental, moral and spiritual crisis.

(Downtown 2/2/94)

392 Days After The Clintons’ Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

As a Japanese businessman named Kenichi Ohmae recently [in early 1994] noted in the Wall Street Journal (1/13/94), “today the average family income in the U.S. is roughly $40,000, a number that hasn’t increased in real terms for a dozen years,” while “in Japan the comparable figure is $72,000.” Because of lower U.S. wage rates, Japanese transnational firms reduce their labor costs by about 30 percent when they invest in the U.S. The United States is rapidly becoming a country of low-wage “permanent temp” workers, 392 days after the Clintons’ inauguration.

If “Uncle Bill” wants to finally give us some of that “change” the Clintons promised, maybe he should start fighting against the special transnational corporate interests and the tax-avoidance activity of the U.S. super-rich, instead of demagogically launching yet another right-wing war on crime, welfare recipients and the civil liberties of U.S. prisoners—as part of his 1996 neo-conservative re-election campaign. But, according to the Times (1/26/94), in last month’s “State of the Establishment” (my quotes) speech “Mr. Clinton offered no new legislative proposals or policy initiatives.” Happy Presidents’ Day!

(Downtown 2/16/94)

406 Days After The Clintons’ Inauguration: Where’s The Change?

Like former CIA Director Bush I, Bill “LBJ” Clinton appears willing to drag the United States into yet another costly foreign military adventure by practicing the politics of military threats, instead of practicing the politics of peace and love. And like Bush I, Bill Clinton really has no idea how to reduce unemployment and restore [permanent] economic prosperity to the Big Apple.

By threatening the Serbs of Bosnia with Pentagon bombs and demagogically scapegoating welfare recipients for the failure of the Clintons’ administration to restore full employment in the U.S., Bill Clinton is beginning to sound more and more like “the Ronald Reagan of the Baby-Boom Generation” everyday. People in the U.S. have been patiently waiting 406 days for the Clintons’ Administration to give them some kind of 1990s New Deal. Yet the neoconservative, white Southern Democrats still have no domestic agenda for the radical democratization of U.S. society in the 1990s.

Bill “LBJ” Clinton still seems more interested in what happens in Bosnia these days than in providing apartments for New York City’s homeless people or responding to the demands of People With AIDS. And he also appears more eager to tax food stamp recipients than he is to increase the taxation rate of billionaires like Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, Si Newhouse, Laurence Tisch [now-deceased] and [then-] Village Voice Owner Leonard Stern. Happy International Women’s Day!

(Downtown 3/2/94)

Next: Where Was The “Change” During The Clintons’ First Two Terms?—Part 9